It was only a year ago that Instagram enabled ads to be shown on users’ home feeds. Since then, the platform has launched Stories and Live, enabling potential new areas for brands to monetise.

And this is exactly what the company has announced just this week, after debuting ads in its Stories feature. These will occupy the full screen and appear in between certain Stories, with initial brand partners to include Netflix, Airbnb, General Motors and Capital One. Airbnb shared exactly how they might be incorporating their ads into Instagram Stories, with these appearing seamlessly in between the user’s friends’ and other brand posts. And as usual, users will be able to tap back and forth between these ads. The difference for brands in comparison to their usual promotional stories, is that their content will be displayed to non-followers, and Instagram will also enable brands to analyse metrics such as engagement, number of impressions and reach, via the Insights feature. However, these stories will still be skippable and feature non-clickable links- and they’ll also only be shown to the user once he or she has clicked through or watched at least several of their friends’ stories in succession.

The feature is not dissimilar to Snapchat’s own Snap Ads, with the first slight difference being the length- Snap ads are 10 seconds long, whereas Instagram Stories ads will allow for both 5-second image ads, and 15-second video ads. And the second difference involves the sequence- users on Snapchat can only select stories they wish to watch in playlist format, with ads displayed in these. Snapchat has enabled ads to be shown on its app since 2014, with regular updates such as shoppable ads, sponsored filters, sponsored lenses, and the launch of Snapchat Partners, its advertising API enabling ads to be sold by third parties.

But ever keen to compete, the company has been testing two of its own new ad features: deep linking, and web auto-fill. The former will allow users to click on links in stories, which will automatically direct them to sections in other apps- this will work well for brands who will benefit from users visiting pages in their retail apps straight from Snapchat. Web auto-fill will automatically enter users’ details into forms, such as sign up or product forms- this will be a convenient way for users to quickly register their interest in brands’ items or services, and even have credit card information stored for easy access. It seems that in this way, Snapchat is one step ahead of Instagram, which doesn’t have an auto-fill feature, and currently only allows clickable links in paid posts, while deep linking can only be integrated via third party developers.

However, we think it’s a good time for Instagram to introduce ads into Stories- the feature has so far proven successful for organic brand ads, and allowing these to become a formal part of the platform will only help businesses grow. While link functionality is not yet as sophisticated on Snapchat, this clearly hasn’t stopped users and brands from benefitting, with clickable tagging capability still enough at this stage. It will certainly be interesting to watch how Instagram expands this new ad feature- will it continue to add further tools like Snapchat, or soon integrate ads into its Live feature, or in other sections of the app?

We’d love to hear your thoughts too! Do you think having full screen ads displayed in Instagram Stories disrupt the seamless viewer experience? And do you think it will be one of the most profitable ad spaces for brands to monetise from? Do let us know by tweeting to us @PracticeDigital and by sharing your comments on our Facebook page.